Minor Electrical: can i clip this and run straight for control with a thermostat? Pic

im looking at something like this to control my heat mats: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Digital-Gardening-Thermostat-Heat-Mats-Soil-Temp-Digital-Temperature-Control-/270907532649?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f1358e569

the mats currently have adjustable dials which are fubar and erratic with their temp flux's. The pics below show the heat mat.... can i just cut out the dial and wire it straight? or is there some kind of resistor in there that i need to have? thanks in advance for the help.

Don't advise doing that. It could get too hot then.

so there is indeed a variable resistor in the dial apparatus then?

Yes. A potentiometer is a variable resistor which determines how hot the mat will become. And yes, it is necessary... If anything, I would go to an electrical supply house and try to find a better device and THEN cut it out, unplugged from electrical source, of course, and wire in the cut ends of your cable. It should just wire up like a single pole switch, i.e., the ground and neutral will tie to each other and run straight thru, and the hot will come in on one side and come out on the other side of your new device's terminals... Btw, I am a journeyman wireman in the IBEW...

You may haveta buy something like a 4" square box and a couple of romex connectors to house your new potentiometer in and have safe guarded entries for your cable... Oftentimes storebought, or factory wired devices like the one on your heat mat cord arent worth a crap... Just like most timers are not made to withstand the demands of lighting, and a contactor panel is required for certain lighting setups, where the timer has it's own circuit, which is the control circuiot, and the lights have their own circuits, no matter what voltage, that just run thru the contactor, which is built to withstand the higher demands placed on it with H.I.D. lights, instead of burning up the cheap lil timers you'd find at Home Depot or Lowes or wherever...